


Cosmetic

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Established Relationship, Illusions, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:28:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Thor knows Loki, and he knows his wiles, and he knows what he ought and ought not to do; and they continue on as they always have, because those moments when Loki is startled into honesty too clear to keep from his sharp-edged features are when Thor thinks him most beautiful of all, and Thor is the only one who has the means to bring him there." Loki is most beautiful when he is most himself.





	Cosmetic

Thor has always thought Loki beautiful.

This is perhaps less worth the remark than otherwise, when speaking of someone who has made illusion his byword, who has laid claim to the subterfuge and mystique their mother offered with the same greedy hunger with which he reaches for every kind of mischief, every sort of inconvenience he might lay hand to. Loki bears a thousand faces at his beck and call, a million existences ready to slide over his own like a fresh garment to replace the stains and tears of the old, and he wears them with near-seamless grace. It has takes centuries of experience for Thor to learn to look for the tiny tells: the flick of a wrist, the dip of a lash, the twist of a smile that give away Loki’s false faces as the masks they are, and even then all his experience can’t save him from those covers Loki sometimes draws over his own features, to turn a frown to a smile or softness to brittle rigidity. It is impossible to trust Loki, an exercise in futility undone by the other’s nature before well begun; Thor knows this as surely as he knows the fit of Mjolnir in his hand, as absolutely as the birthright to his throne that runs in his blood. He knows Loki, and he knows his wiles, and he knows what he ought and ought not to do; and they continue on as they always have, because those moments when Loki is startled into honesty too clear to keep from his sharp-edged features are when Thor thinks him most beautiful of all, and Thor is the only one who has the means to bring him there.

“ _Ah_.” Loki’s voice always breaks so, over the leading edge of heat in him; Loki’s head ever tips back along that angle, as if following out some response too deep-instinct for him to shed it under the duress to which Thor’s efforts have urged him. “Gently, brother, would you make a battlefield of our bed?”

“You would,” Thor says, dragging the words from deep in his chest without loosening his hold on Loki’s wrists, where he has them pinned up over the other’s head under the force of both his hands. Loki’s illusions may mask his seeming and gild the eyes of observers with deception, but his most elegant deceit gives way to touch, to the reality of Thor’s body demanding sincerity, and Thor has learned to make the most of that weakness. He sets one knee deeper to the silky sheets and rocks forward to brace himself for another arcing thrust into Loki spread out beneath him; under his gaze Loki’s lashes dip, Loki’s throat strains on a moan that rises and breaks like music in the heat-thick air between them. Thor’s breathing spills from him in a gust of arousal and he moves again, drawing back for a longer, more thorough stroke to fit the want of his body to the give of Loki’s, to feel the shuddering tension of Loki’s own pleasure tightening instinct against the pressure of Thor within him. “I simply seek to grant you the excitement you would seem to desire even within the peace of the bedroom.”

Loki rolls his eyes. “I would not truly have stabbed you,” he says. “I expected you to find that knife in your _ever_ thorough efforts to strip me of all my finery.”

“Indeed,” Thor agrees. “And of course you must have expected my reaction to such as well.”

Loki’s shoulder lifts towards the spill of ink-dark hair laid out across the sheets beneath him. “The possibility had crossed my mind.”

“Of course it had,” Thor says. “Loki, God of Mischief, is always prepared for all eventualities.” He tips his hips forward to ride out another pull of slick friction; Loki’s forehead creases, Loki’s lips part on some sound too faint or too withheld for Thor to parse, but the tightening of his thighs around Thor’s hips gives him away as clearly as a shout of pleasure would do. “So you must have expected that I might choose to shed all our weaponry and leave us to join with no more power than what our bodies alone grant us.”

Loki arches one dark brow high above a green eye. “You can hardly claim to have granted me an equal chance,” he points out. “We both know you have always been my superior when it comes to brute strength.”

“Of course not,” Thor says, and shifts his hold at Loki’s wrists to ease whatever pressure he might be putting on the pale skin under his hold. Loki flexes his fingers, drawing them towards fists to lift the tendons in his arms under Thor’s hold, but Thor just maintains his grip and tightens it again as Loki lets the strain go. “Your silver tongue has always been your greatest asset, by your own accounting.” Thor leans in closer, catching his weight at the flex of his arms as he tips in until his hair slides forward from his shoulders to hang around his face. “I have granted you the use of your favorite tool, which you are more than free to make use of.”

“So you have,” Loki says. “And yet you insist on holding me down to the bed in pursuit of this uninspired variety of pleasure.” His legs shift, his heels draw up to dig in against Thor’s back, just against the flex of the other’s hips falling into a steady rhythm; when his legs tighten his whole body cants up, lifting off the bed to meet Thor over him as if the action is speaking to Loki’s impatience with what satisfaction they are already seeking. “Were you to let me up I could show you precisely how talented my tongue happens to be.”

Thor groans in the back of his throat, the low rumble of appreciation rather than disinterest. “A tempting offer,” he admits. “But I think less satisfying for you than my preference.” He tips his head down to cast a pointed gaze between them, where Loki’s cock is flushed dark and hot with arousal even untouched by any but the secondhand sensation of Thor moving into him.

Loki’s mouth twists, the line of his lips shifting like they’re struggling to fit themselves to a shape before he settles on the drag of one of his smirks, the raw ones that tense one corner of his mouth and never touch the flickering darkness in his eyes. “All this time and you’re still making the mistake of believing your eyes, brother.”

Thor shakes his head. “I have made that mistake often before,” he allows. “But not this time.” And he lets his weight come down, tilting his body in and down to press atop Loki beneath him until the flush of Thor’s skin fits to the cool of Loki’s, until the sweat of one body catches and mingles with the salt of the other. Loki tenses under Thor’s weight, his back curving like he’s trying to flinch away with nowhere to go but the bed beneath him, but Thor can feel resistance pressing hard against the flat of his stomach as the want-slick head of Loki’s cock catches and drags up over him. Thor breathes out, a heavy sigh of satisfaction, and when he leans down towards Loki’s dark-lashed gaze it’s to dip sideways and press his nose to a tangle of dark hair, to spill heat over the flutter of a speeding pulse.

“Come now, brother,” Thor murmurs, speaking soft in counterpoint to the hiss of Loki’s breathing coming fast at the fall of his own hair. “Even you cannot lie all the time.”

Loki gusts an exhale that Thor can feel work in the chest against his own as clearly as it ruffles his hair. “If only I might,” he says, in the soft tone that Thor still never knows if he’s intended to hear or not, and he shifts his wrists to slide himself free of Thor’s grip. Thor could stop him, with a tighter hold, with more force, with the distraction of his movement; but there is nothing headier than the unjustified faith he gives at moments like this, where he trusts to the pant of Loki’s breathing and the ache of his desire to keep their coupling from harm. So he lets Loki go, giving over his hold on his brother’s wrists to take his weight against the brace of an arm instead, and when he reaches down with his free hand his fingers find the dip of Loki’s waist, his thumb fitting into the curve of the other’s lowest rib as if it was ever made to linger there. Loki reaches up with one hand, digging his fingers far into Thor’s unbound hair to brace himself with a fist on the locks, and down with the other, to set the edges of his fingernails in against the muscle at the small of Thor’s back, and Thor takes his cue without awaiting the sound of the order. He moves sharply, bucking forward with the extra force granted him by the support of his arm and the brace of his hold, and when Loki’s fingers dig to scratch at his back the friction of their force comes in time with a moan at the other’s lips too immediate to leave space for even Loki to feign.

Thor likes these moments best. There is a pleasure to the flirtation, to the dance and parry that inevitably leads them here, that collapses them into bed and into each other with more or less teasing along the way, but for all Loki’s seductive smiles and coy glances Thor loves him best, wants him most when all his art has given way, when the only deception he has left to him is the tension that turns his want to pain, that casts encouragement into the drag of nails and the pull of hair. Loki arches under Thor, his thighs tightening at the other’s hips and his breath straining towards the sound of a sob, and Thor understands what Loki means to say with this seeming of near-pain, and he continues, bringing them together in satisfying thrusts and retreats that only serve to whet the relief of their bodies coupling again, of the heat and movement and tension of the pleasure rising like lightning forming amidst night-dark clouds and waiting a chance to strike. Loki’s breath rasps at Thor’s ear, his parted lips turning every exhale to a moan of need, and Thor’s own breathing is fever-hot, panting over inhales that burn dizzy want in him more than easing the need for air in his lungs. They are moving, the both of them, Loki rising up and Thor bearing down, until surely the world must be dissolving around them, there must be nothing left in all the nine realms but the two of them coming together as night meets day, as summer chases winter.

Thor thinks, at first, that the light is behind his own eyelids, that it is the onrushing surge of desire in him that is shimmering color across his vision. But he can still see the dark of Loki’s hair spread to a curtain beneath them, can still see the strain of tendons at the side of his brother’s neck as Thor moves into him; and then there’s another flicker, a ripple of shadow chasing itself over Loki’s skin right in front of Thor’s eyes. Thor blinks, startled out of his attention to the tide of heat rising between them by this unexpected development; it’s enough to draw him away from the strain of Loki’s body beneath his, to push him up onto the support of his arm so he can gaze wide-eyed at the familiar face below his own.

Loki’s lashes flutter, his eyes come open to gaze up at Thor. He’s clearly heat-drunk, his vision slides and skids over Thor’s face as he tries to collect himself, but his confusion doesn’t wait on his permission to knit at his brows and set itself to a dip of uncertainty at his lips. “What?” His mouth drags taut at one corner, tugging into a smile that has all tension and no warmth under it. “Do you need a reminder of who you’ve taken to your bed?”

Thor doesn’t bother answering. He lifts his hand instead, giving over his hold at Loki’s waist to touch his fingertips to the other’s mouth instead, to lay his fingerprints against the pained tension of that smile. Loki’s lips go soft at one, startled out of their strain by that moment of contact, and under Thor’s fingers there’s another flicker, a shadow of color sweeping out over Loki’s mouth and across his skin like a stormcloud racing over a sky.

“What?” Loki’s voice is softer now, verging onto the beginnings of concern; he turns his head to the side to shake off Thor’s touch at his mouth as some of the heat in his eyes hardens to defensive anger. “I’m flattered by your attention but I would rather you lingered in appreciation after you’ve satisfied me, if nothing else.”

Thor shakes his head. “Brother,” he says, and touches his fingertips to Loki’s cheek, where blue is rising and fading like a wave just under the surface of the other’s skin. “You’re flickering.”

Thor can see epiphany wash over Loki’s expression. His eyes go wide, his lips part, and then blankness slams over his face like a wall as he throws up an illusion at once to cover the giveaway of his skin. Thor can see the tracery of it glinting green over his fingers, can feel the mismatch between Loki’s skin and the overlay drawn over it, but Loki holds it steady, with only the horror in his unmasked eyes to speak to his response.

“Turn aside,” he says, and there is royalty enough on his voice for a dozen princes, assumed command sufficient to bend the knee of any but that brother who has walked alongside him in every path of power they ever found for themselves.

Thor sighs and slides his hand to cradle the side of Loki’s neck, to weight his palm to the panicked flutter of the other’s pulse. “It is no shame to be what you are,” he says. “You do not need to hide yourself with me, brother.”

Loki twists aside, as whip-quick in his retreat as he is in smacking Thor’s touch aside. “Spoken as someone who has never had a need for it.” He turns his head to the side, his mouth set so hard on tension Thor feels sure it’s truth and not the disguise of an illusion. “You have no idea what it’s like.”

Thor touches his hand to Loki’s shoulder. Loki tenses under his touch, his whole body flexing on strain, but he doesn’t push the other away, and that is enough. “I don’t,” Thor says, gentle, placating, as honest as he knows how to make himself. He draws his touch up, tracing across the pale of Loki’s skin, the line of his shoulder, the curve of his throat; Loki’s mouth is still set but his lashes are dipping, his expression is shifting until it looks more like tears at his mouth than fury. Thor traces up the other’s face, against the side of his cheek and around to sink his fingers into Loki’s hair; Loki shudders a breath, his lashes fall shut entirely, and Thor leans in to urge his lips to ghosting contact at the shell of the other’s ear. “Show me instead.”

Loki hisses judgment on his tongue. “You ask the impossible of me.”

Thor turns his head to kiss Loki’s cheek, to press his lips to the green-shimmer illusion of his brother’s face. “I ask your forgiveness for it,” he murmurs, and he draws his knee up higher, until the inside of his leg is pressing to Loki’s hip and the other’s thigh is urged up high between them. Loki’s mouth twists, his lashes dip, but he doesn’t protest, and when Thor slides his hand back down to the other’s neck Loki leans into it by letting his head fall heavy to the bed beneath him.

“Loki,” Thor says, that name that has been sugar, that has been poison, turned soft now with affection, with familiarity, with trust won in a hundred tiny increments, a thousand uncounted victories. He leans in to kiss the corner of Loki’s mouth, lingering for a long moment before he draws away. “Show me.”

Loki hisses a breath past gritted teeth, fighting over the air even as he takes it. His hand in Thor’s hair tightens, his fingers form a knot of the other’s golden locks. When he speaks his voice is raw, strained and as vicious as a knife-edge. “Take it, then.” Thor gusts a breath, relief and strain at once, and he urges his hand against Loki’s neck, and he moves.

It takes a moment for Loki’s hold to slip. His jaw is still set, his breathing still ragged; under the iron control of his self-consciousness his illusion holds steady for long seconds, laid into perfect clarity against his features and only sparkling faint under Thor’s touch. But then Thor’s hips angle up, his length urging deeper than before, and Loki’s breath hisses free, the sound accompanied by a ripple of darkness across his skin. Thor’s chest tightens, his fingers curl, and when he moves again there’s another shimmer, darker than the first, as Loki’s carefully kept restraint finally starts to give way. Thor seeks his angle, pressing himself in against the strain of Loki’s thighs, urging himself close to the upward tilt of Loki’s hips, and beneath him Loki ripples with color, shades of silver and blue coursing over him in time with every thrust Thor takes. His skin glows, ivory to cobalt and back again, the enchantment usually laid upon him overcome by the surge of his own identity rising in him; his lips shimmer to blue, losing their color and regaining it as if every moan in the back of his throat carries a surge of dye to fill the veins tracing under his skin. It’s all across him, shadows traversing every dip of his body, the strain in his chest and the inside of his thighs and down between them, melting into the length of his cock like the heat collecting there is enough to burn through the Asgardian seeming laid over him so long ago. Thor moves, and Thor watches, and beneath him Loki shimmers with color as radiant and rich as a twilight sky, the heat of their joining coursing through him to make artistry of their desire.

“Beautiful,” Thor breathes, truth falling from his lips as the only answer he can give to that playing across Loki’s body to turn his skin into a tapestry of sincerity. “Brother, you are so beautiful.”

Loki’s jaw sets, his lashes lift; when he cuts a glare sideways at Thor the dark of his eyes fractures with illumination, scarlet rising from the depths like it’s being drawn up from the shadows of a deep well. “You--” he starts, his mouth trembling to strain the word towards a curse; but Thor moves, and tension breaks free of Loki’s control to shudder the whole of his expression to heat. “ _Thor_.”

“Yes,” Thor says, agreement and encouragement and the glow of unbearable heat all at once on his lips, and he moves again, borne forward on the wave of their creation, on the rhythm of his action and the plea of Loki’s tight-wound body and the illumination of that darkness against Loki’s skin. Thor moves, and Loki gasps, and illusion melts free, trailing emerald streamers as if dissolving under those waves of sensation rushing through them both. Loki’s fingers are knotted into Thor’s hair, he’s clutching at Thor’s shoulder as if to brace himself, as if to hold his head above the water of an endless ocean, and Thor can feel arousal like a drumbeat in him, answering the shimmer over Loki’s body as if it’s taken the shape of an echo. Loki’s eyes are open but glazed on heat, Loki’s lips are parted on the voiceless pressure of want, and Thor pushes forward and the last of the illusion gives way to grant Loki back his truest seeming. For a breath Loki is laid entirely bare beneath Thor’s body, the dark-whorled blue of his skin and the crimson of his eyes shadowed in the light; but it’s his expression that Thor watches, as his eyes open wide, as his mouth falls open. His throat works, his chest strains on an inhale, and then Loki’s head goes back, his features convulsing on a spasm of something as desperate as pain, as uncontrolled as agony. His knees tighten around Thor’s hips, his body clenches around Thor’s cock, and between them he spills a wave of heat over blue-tinted skin as he cries out a wordless sound of pleasure. Thor sees him for a moment, laid absolutely, unquestioningly bare by the pleasure Thor has pulled from him, and then Loki’s fingers curl into Thor’s hair and Thor’s gaze gives way to the surge of heat that rises up to overthrow the very foundation of his coherency. His vision goes white, his arms flex tight, and “ _Loki_ ” is what his throat offers as he gives up the pulse of his arousal to the demand of Loki beneath him.

Thor returns slow, like finding his way back across the span of endless stars guided by nothing more than a weight at his hair and the slide of slow-gentle fingers through the locks. The action is careful, as delicate as a winter breeze through tree branches, but Thor follows it all the same, returning the pieces of himself to their rightful place until he finds himself there too, cradled in the clasp of Loki’s legs and the hold of his arms as if he has never been anywhere else. Loki has gone slack beneath him, the strain of his body melted to the languid comfort of satisfaction; only his fingers stay strong, as they wind through Thor’s hair to urge it back from the other’s face. Thor groans a low note into Loki’s shoulder, giving voice to his appreciation by sound if not by word, and then he turns his head against the support and blinks his eyes open to look at his brother’s face.

Loki has returned to his usual seeming, the one placed on him by their father at his finding. Thor knows the dark of those brows, the set of that mouth, the pale of that skin; still, he lingers in the gazing for a moment, fixing the details back into place in his memory with patient intent. Loki does not turn; he goes on gazing at the ceiling, apparently oblivious to his brother’s attention, until Thor feels him take a breath to speak. “I do not intend to show that to any other, before you ask.”

Thor snorts a laugh against Loki’s dark hair. “I would not expect you too,” he says, and turns his head down to the other’s shoulder so he can brace himself and bring his other arm down to loop around Loki’s waist, pinning them together before he sighs back into relaxation. “I am hardly going to complain about keeping some part of you to myself, brother.”

Thor can feel Loki’s huff of derision under his chest. “You’d rather not have your brother be seen as the monster he is?”

“No.” Thor ducks in to touch his lips against the line of Loki’s collarbone. “My motives are far more selfish, Loki. I wish to keep the knowledge of your real beauty for my own appreciation.”

Loki’s fingers tighten in Thor’s hair, Loki’s head turns towards Thor pressing at his shoulder. For a moment Thor thinks Loki is going to say something, but in the end he just takes a breath and tips his head close to rest his face against Thor’s hair. There’s not quite enough force at his lips to make a kiss of the contact, and not so little to keep it no more than comfort, but Thor stays as he is, only shifting to tighten his arm around Loki and slide his other hand farther into the soft of the other’s hair.

He doesn’t need to see to appreciate Loki’s beauty.


End file.
